Published on May 28, 2025 by Kyle McClenagan
Army Corps. of Engineers moving forward with Ike Dike concept in new study
Image: ABC13 Eyewitness News, Army Corps. of Engineers Design
The long-envisioned Ike Dike project, which is awaiting federal funding, entails constructing a multifaceted barrier system off the coast of Galveston that would help protect the Houston region and its petrochemical industry from the storm surge associated with a powerful hurricane.
Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a bill into law that will create a special account to manage funds dedicated to the Coastal Texas Project, known locally as the “Ike Dike.”
The long-envisioned project entails constructing a multifaceted barrier system off the coast of Galveston that would help protect the Houston region and its petrochemical industry from the storm surge associated with a powerful hurricane. The plan was hatched in response to Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Houston and Galveston areas in 2008.
House Bill 1089 was authored by state Rep. Dennis Paul (R-Houston) and is nearly identical to a bill Paul authored in 2023. The previous version made it to the governor’s desk in 2023, when Abbott vetoed it. HB 1089, a retooled version of the measure, was signed by Abbott last Saturday.
According to the text of HB 1089, the Gulf Coast Protection Account would be administered by the Texas General Land Office. The fund would consist of money appropriated, credited or transferred to the account by the legislature, which in 2023 allocated $550 million for the Ike Dike project after previously dedicating $400 million.
In 2023, the project was projected to cost an estimated $57 billion and take 20 years to construct, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the initiative. Congress authorized the project in 2022 but has yet to dedicate any significant funding for it. Federal lawmakers denied a $100 million funding request in 2023 by U.S. Rep. Randy Weber of Galveston.
Speaking at a meeting of the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources in March, Paul said he had altered the bill to address Abbott’s previous concerns about the requirements for what funds had to be deposited into the account and how they could be used.
“There was some technical issue that came up in the bill … so we brought it back,” Paul said in March. “All that stuff is cleared up. It’s set to go. It’s going to be a clean bill to make sure that we only take care of the funds to take care of the projects that we need to get done.”
Deidre Norman, the chief financial officer of the Gulf Coast Protection District, spoke to the committee about the potentially wide-ranging benefits that the Coastal Texas Project would have. The Gulf Coast Protection District was created during the 2021 legislative session to oversee the state’s coastal projects.
“These multi-billion-dollar mega projects, sometimes referred to as the coastal spine or the Ike Dike, will protect the upper Texas coast from the devastating effects of hurricane storm surge, safeguarding our communities and the region’s nationally significant energy, petrochemical, national defense and manufacturing facilities and [prevent] significant and long-lasting disruption to state, national and global supply chains,” Norman said in March.
The account’s funds will only be used for projects included in the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Feasibility Study report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — including the Ike Dike project.